There are five steps from the sidewalk up to Doris' apartment at 419 N. Fifth St.

But those five steps might as well be a mountain to the 61-year-old single mother.

You see, her daughter, Amanda Blocker, 16, has suffered her whole life from cerebral palsy. She gets seizures secondary to her palsy and, like Doris, has asthma. In order to make sure she remains nourished, Amanda's doctors installed a permanent feeding tube.

Their mornings start before dawn. Doris wakes up around 4 a.m. and gets herself ready for the day. Then she wakes up Amanda, washes and feeds her and gets her dressed for school.

Amanda can't do any of those things herself because her palsy has left her arms and legs immobilized and withered. She can't speak and communicates mainly through eye movement. Despite her disabilities, Amanda is in 11th grade at Reading High and gets A's and B's on her report card.

Once she is ready, Doris lifts Amanda into her wheelchair. She pushes the chair out onto their front porch and looks for a healthy-looking man to walk by.

There are five steps, but that top step is a doozy. It's about a foot high.

Doris says a man who lives a few doors down helps her most days. She doesn't know his name. She calls him "Country." She doesn't know why.

If Doris can't find Country or someone else to help her get Amanda's wheelchair to the street, the school bus driver will leave. The bus drivers won't help get the chair on or off the porch.

Liability, they tell her.

If Amanda doesn't go to school, Doris calls and says why. The school district issues a $100 citation to Doris, which means she has to go to district court about a month later where the judge dismisses the case because he knows her situation. Doris doesn't have a car. Court records show she has been cited for truancy at least 10 times. Don't get me started on that angle of her story.

I visited Doris on Thursday. My parents should have named me Thomas because I couldn't believe the story she was telling me over the phone. Her situation was so desperate, it sounded too bad to be true.

Doris showed me the inside of her modest apartment. She showed us the medicines and formula she has for Amanda. She showed us the lounge chair by the big front windows where Amanda spends most of her days.

We left the apartment and walked out onto the front porch to wait for Amanda's bus.

Country, her big, strong neighbor, wasn't around.

"Excuse me," Doris said to a tall thin man walking down Fifth Street.

"Can you help me?" she asked.

"OK," said Joel Ellison.

Ellison, 20, was walking to a BARTA bus stop to get to basketball practice at Penn State Berks.

"So what, do you help Doris out if you're passing by," I asked Ellison.

"I don't know her," he replied.

At Doris' direction, Ellison took the handles of Amanda's wheelchair from the driver. He pushed her over the curb and then pulled her backward up the steps.

"Now, watch that last step," Doris warned. "It's very high."

Ellison wheeled Amanda into the vestibule of the apartment house. He then lifted her out of her wheelchair, carried her inside and gently placed her on the quilt-covered lounge chair. When he left the apartment he glanced at me. I was speechless. I patted him on the shoulder as he walked by. He never even took his backpack off.

It felt, for a moment, like I was in the presence of greatness.

But good guys, like Country and Ellison, aren't always around.

That's why Doris Blunt needs a ramp.

In Kelly's Korner, Dan Kelly writes about the people and personalities that make Berks County special. Contact him 610-371-5040 or dkelly@readingeagle.com.